what this study means (and does not mean)

For people who wanted to consider monitoring their small papillary thyroid cancers that were not causing any symptoms, it was hard to find what they needed in terms of information and support. The study was done in late 2015, there is a little bit more information available now. We do not know if the levels of support from doctors and people's support systems would be better now.

Monitoring was challenging for the participants: there was not a lot of support, and people worried about their cancer growing. Two people said the worry got better over time.

​This study is not designed to convince you that you should or should not monitor a thyroid cancer. Monitoring of papillary thyroid cancer is complicated: not all cases should be monitored. Talk to your health care provider if you are thinking about this question.

The data here reflect only the experiences of the people we interviewed, there may be others who feel differently.

Interview studies like this one are useful for understanding people's experiences. They should not be used to obtain counts, and you can't calculate statistics on these kinds of data.​